She was white and probably in her forties, and psychic. She didn’t meet Julian’s eyes, of course, but she directed her gaze and her words at his sternum with no shortage of enthusiasm. “Will you sign our petition? The government has to listen, if you speak.”
It would be nice if that were true, he thought sourly. “What’s the petition?” A quick scan of the flyers showed an array of Wiccan symbols and some familiar words. Otherworld. Sidhe. It gave him an inkling even before she answered.
“A request—no, a demand—for them to let the sidhe come home! The Otherworld has returned to us at last, and they think they have the right to keep the two worlds separate? They’re keeping you from your family!”
At times like this, Julian was grateful for the long years of practice that taught him not to show his true thoughts. Without that, he would have laughed in this woman’s face.
She didn’t recognize him. His name had been in the news often enough after Welton closed down, and sometimes they included his picture . . . but until technomagic found a way to convey psychic powers through audio or video, an image would always fall short of truly representing a wilder on screen.
If she actually looked at him, she might recognize his face. So long as she kept her gaze below his chin, though, she had no idea he’d been the first one to make contact with the sidhe last fall.
“They aren’t my family,” he said, trying to keep the words neutral instead of harsh. Even the friendly Seelie were far more alien to him than human beings were. “And the planar injunction is a good idea. Without it, we’d have chaos right now.”
They had some amount of chaos anyway, and whether or not the planar injunction was having any real effect was anybody’s guess. It was the greatest undertaking of ceremonial magic in recorded history: a global ward placed at the boundary between the mortal world and the Otherworld, restricting contact between the two. Julian was certain the sidhe could violate it if they wanted to, though they had promised the U.N. they would respect it until some kind of agreement could be reached about relations between the two realms. Whether they could violate it without anybody noticing was less certain.
But at least it prevented people like this woman from jaunting off to meet the fairies. And it meant there weren’t sidhe openly walking around every major city, sparking riots and religious revivals everywhere they went. There had still been some riots, usually when demonstrations and counter-protests went sour, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been—at least so far.
“Chaos?” the woman said indignantly. “This is the promised day! Our immortal cousins have returned to us at last! Once they bring their gifts to the whole world, we won’t suffer these problems, the hatred of the baseline for the blood. You won’t be shunned for your power!”
There was no way to answer her that wouldn’t turn into an argument. Have you read any First Manifestation history? would only make her defensive. The Unseelie nearly killed the woman I love by sharing their “gifts” with her would give away his identity and draw far too much attention.
If you’re so eager to see me welcomed in, why won’t you look me in the eye?
“I’m afraid I have an appointment to keep,” Julian said, and walked away.
Naive as that woman was, Julian had heard and read about far worse. A cult had formed in New Mexico and then committed mass suicide, convinced they would reincarnate as sidhe. A new Christian sect was on the rise in Iowa, preaching that the return of the Otherworld was the Second Coming, and a Seelie Christ would rain destruction on all the baselines while sweeping the sidhe-blooded psychics into paradise. Fiain had been attacked in Seattle, Houston, Kansas City. At least that woman and her petition weren’t violent.
Things in D.C. had been relatively quiet, thanks to some well-calibrated efforts to keep the peace. A number of Fiain Guardians had arrived over the last few months, likely drawn there by the ancient geas that guided them to where trouble would be. Marches and protests were monitored for flash points even before they began, courtesy of extensive divination, and the failure of the nation’s capital to go up in flames helped keep things from spinning out of control elsewhere in the country.
And the whole time, Julian stood by and watched.
Four Mile Run Park wasn’t heavily populated after dark. A few joggers went by, some of them with dogs in tandem, and cyclists flowed past on their way through, but the night wasn’t warm enough for people to sit on the benches just for the pleasure of fresh air. The bars were chill beneath his legs before he threaded heat into them, and the wind bit at his cheeks as he waited.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. Grayson was a punctual woman.
Julian rose to his feet when he saw her approaching. Once she was near enough to speak without raising her voice, Grayson said dryly, “You make me feel like a character from a spy thriller, meeting you this way.”
She could pass for one without much trouble. Her black coat blended with the shadows, and her dark skin scarcely stood out more; only her cropped hair was a spot of brightness, shocking white beneath one of the scattered lamps. Julian said, “I can’t exactly do things officially, when nobody has made me official.”
Grayson inclined her head to one side. He took the implicit invitation, ambling across the grass at a slow pace, away from the cyclists and joggers, toward the stream that gave the park its name. “Your unofficial status means I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” Grayson said. “Unless you called me out here for a chat about your courses for next fall — which I doubt.”
Julian didn’t smile. They both knew he wasn’t likely to ever go back to Welton. As near as anyone could tell, half the impulse that sent him to college in the first place had been work of the geas. Now that the Otherworld had returned, there was no need for him there anymore. The other half . . .
No one was likely to let him go on studying how to break the deep shield. Not when they were busy arguing about whether they should be allowed to inflict it on Kim, too.
“I’m tired of being useless,” Julian said bluntly. “If they aren’t willing to make me a registered Guardian yet, fine. But I want to do something.”
It was galling, being relegated the sidelines after everything that had gone before. Julian had no illusions; he knew the task of dealing with the Otherworld was no longer his problem. It had only been circumstance and the geas that put him on the front lines in the first place. The situation was much too large for any single person, and there was little space in it for a private citizen to help out. It was a matter for the governments of the world and their duly appointed representatives.
At first he’d been able to help. He’d been questioned more than a dozen times by everyone from the DSPA to the CIA, relating every last bit of information he’d gathered about the sidhe. He even submitted to telepathic interrogation, letting one of his fellow wilders drag out shreds of memory too small for him to consciously recall. He hated the mental intrusion, but he was willing to endure it, for the sake of doing what he could.
After that, though . . . nothing.
“You took yourself out of the system,” Grayson reminded him. “There are well-honed procedures in place for shifting wilders from the Centers into the Guardian Corps, but not for doing the same with a college student barely two years into his degree.”
The difference shouldn’t matter. College student or no, Julian was still a wilder. He had the Krauss rating and the resulting strength of gift, and he had all the training the Fiain received before reaching the age of majority. There were things he still needed to learn, but that was true of every wilder when they left the Center. There was no reason he couldn’t go through the usual crash course and be certified as a Guardian.
No reason except bureaucracy. He’d dealt with it before, when he convinced everyone he should be permitted to get out of the system and go to Welton. Now he had to climb that mountain again, this time to get back in.
“Are you active again?” he asked Grayson.
She shook her head. “I did my tour of duty. I have official status as an advisor, but I’m not going back into the field.”
Which meant she wouldn’t be able to pull strings on his behalf. She was just a professor, teaching students who sometimes became Guardians in turn.
The next thought had barely formed in his mind before she shook her head. “No, Julian. I won’t train you on the sly. It isn’t my place, and if someone found out, it might do your cause more harm than good. I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait for the bureaucratic snarl to sort itself out.”
There was an undercurrent to her words. Julian wondered what she wasn’t saying. “Is it just a snarl? Or is there something else?”
The stream lay just ahead; Grayson stopped before the grass became marshy. She locked her hands behind her back and gazed at the water, not answering him.
Which was an answer in its own right. Julian couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice as he said, “I suppose I haven’t really proved myself. I only have more first-hand experience of the sidhe than just about anyone on the planet.” Anyone except for Kim.
“Look at it from the other direction,” Grayson said. Her breath huffed out quietly, almost a snort. “Think of history.”
First Manifestation? No, something else; he caught a whiff of that from her, though no specifics. Julian’s knowledge of history was patchwork at best. It was a lesser priority at the Center than magical education. But with her comment about spy thrillers fresh in his mind, he saw where she aimed.
He supposed it made sense. After all, the Unseelie had managed to suborn Kim for a time, turning her into their willing agent. What if they had done something subtler to Julian himself? The full extent of their abilities was still a dangerous unknown. With a jolt, he wondered if the telepathic interrogation had stopped at surveying his memories. He doubted it had.
“I’m not working for the Unseelie,” he said. The words sounded flat and cold even to his own ears. “Not voluntarily. Not if my life depended on it. And if they planted any kind of trigger in my mind, someone would have found it.”
Grayson nodded. “Indeed. And yet.”
And yet, they didn’t trust him. Which was more valuable to them? One wilder, not yet fully qualified to work as a Guardian? Or the assurance that they could trust the Guardians they had?
Julian clamped down on his anger by reflex, then almost laughed. He should be embracing the impulse. Weren’t his feelings a defense against the sidhe? If they’d left a trigger in his head, his sheer hatred of the Unseelie would have erased it by now.
But the training was too ingrained, the years in which any open display of emotion would have met with disapproval, even punishment. He maintained control, even when he didn’t want to.
Grayson said, “You have ways to keep busy, I’m sure. Assisting Kim, for example. And I happen to know that Guan recently came to the city. No doubt you have other friends here, too, who would be glad to see you.”
Julian went still. Grayson’s expression was mild, looking out over the water, at the lights of the city. But that hadn’t been an idle comment. Grayson didn’t make idle comments.
If Guan was in town, that might solve several problems at once.
“Thank you,” Julian said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more use,” Grayson said. “Do stay in touch, though.” Without any further farewell, she turned and headed for the nearest path.
Julian stayed by the pond, looking at the water. Then he took out his port and began to search for his old teacher.
~
The rocking of the Metro train threatened to put me to sleep on the way home, but I tried to stay alert. The late meeting with Ramos meant the car was mostly empty, which was both good and bad. Good because nobody had to try to avoid bumping into me; bad because one of the few people there might decide to cause trouble. It had happened two weeks ago, when a group of guys started shouting at me—“Go home, changeling,” that sort of thing. Fortunately there had been enough other people in the car to keep them from really coming after me. But it meant I couldn’t relax.
Not that I’d been relaxing much lately, on trains or off them. Going home to Atlanta after Welton closed down should have been a relief. As it turned out, not so much. My mother would never yell “Go home, changeling” at anybody on a train, but her prejudice against wilders was more deeply ingrained than I’d realized.
So I’d fled Atlanta for D.C., persuading my boss at Future Advisory Research to let me start my summer internship a few months early. At least that gave me something to think about besides my own problems—even if that something was other people’s problems. Plus, being here made it easier to meet with my lawyer, Ramos, anybody who might be able to help me. I’d testified in front of congressional committees several times, and would have been called in more if my mere presence didn’t make people’s skin crawl. It was a fine line to walk between reminding everybody who would decide my fate that I was a real live human being, and reminding them that nearly a third of my DNA actually wasn’t human.
Letting myself think about that was a mistake. It was just a hop, a skip, and a jump from there to remembering how I got this way. My breath shallowed; my heart sped up. I made myself go through one of the calming exercises my therapist had taught me, cataloguing everything on the train. Nine support poles. Eight seats in each block. Three blocks of seats on each side of the train. I wasn’t in the Otherworld. Hell, this was one of the old train lines; with the steel rails rushing by beneath me, I was about as far from the Otherworld as I could get.
But my nerves were frayed by stress and bad sleep, and it was easy to get worked up over nothing.
It would have helped if I had any social life to speak of. Apart from Julian, the only human contact I got these days was with co-workers, politicians, and my lawyer. Welton had closed for the rest of the academic year, scattering my friends to the four corners of the globe. Robert’s father had pulled strings to get him enrolled in the Ardcholáiste na Draíochta in Galway, and Robert feared, not without cause, that he might not be allowed to escape Ireland a second time. Liesel was having a better time of it: she’d been allowed to sit in on an interdisciplinary program for psychiatry, empathy, and social work, even if she wasn’t earning credits for any of it. The rest of the Palladian Circle were at various schools — not that I could count myself as a part of that group anymore. The sympathetic connection between us had been severed before I left Welton, as a security measure.
No, that wasn’t fair. Michele had sent me a message immediately afterward: You’re still one of us. That bond was sacred as well as magical, at least to her, and no athame could cut it entirely.
But messages were no substitute for real human contact. At least I talked with Liesel on a regular basis, though it shamed me to admit half of that was because I hadn’t yet found a therapist in D.C. Liesel wasn’t a professional—not yet, anyway—but she’d been there for the events at Welton, and that mattered. I didn’t have to recount yet again how I’d been kidnapped by the Unseelie, my genes rewritten, my spirit bound to fight for their side. I didn’t have to explain my mother’s prejudices against wilders; I could just tell her how badly my mother was coping with the fact that her daughter had become one. Liesel couldn’t work her empathic mojo over a video call, but being able to talk helped.
The PA system announced my stop. Yawning, I got to my feet and slouched out onto the platform. Nobody else got off, which was unusual. I was reaching up to tie my hair back when I realized I’d made a mistake. This was McPherson Square, not Rosslyn—but the train was already pulling out of the station.
I stood frozen, my hands behind my head. I was tired, but not that tired. I had distinctly heard the loudspeaker announce Rosslyn.
A glitch, then. I would have to wait for the next train.
But the platform was dim and deserted, and bits of trash made skittering sounds as a draft blew them across the concrete. It was late enough that I’d be waiting quite a while for
the next train—much longer than I wanted to. The station was dim and grungy, barely renovated since First Manifestation, and I wanted to be home.
Laughter ghosted through the air.
Every nerve in my body went on high alert. This was all too familiar. Last fall one of the Unseelie had staged a poltergeist scene in Talman Library, starting with books and ending with shards of computer screens. Were they about to do the same here?
There wasn’t much to throw, apart from stray candy wrappers. Unless they could rip the benches free of their bolts? I put my back to an information post, trying to look in all directions at once, and cursed myself for not carrying my athame. I still barely knew how to use the ritual knife as a combat tool, but it did give me comfort, and a way to focus my power.
The Unseelie had left me alone since last fall. I’d deluded myself into thinking that meant I was safe.
Or maybe I was deluding myself now. That could have been some passenger laughing, somebody downstairs on the platform for the Diamond Line. Just because I’d been their target once didn’t mean I would be again. The sidhe weren’t supposed to be here anyway; Ring Anchors like my mother were helping to keep them out.
Even if this was just a panic attack, I’d feel calmer if I were ready. I brought my shields up, blessing the fact that I’d been practicing with Julian. Emotion, at least of the more complex sort, helped defend against the sidhe; they lacked our capacity for it, and it could eat away at their magic. But I couldn’t stage an empathic assault unless I had a target to aim it at.
With the utmost care, I sent out a tentative probe. The iron in the architecture made it hard to do, but I persevered. If there was a sidhe out there, I needed to know.
Something spun my mind like a top, giving me vertigo. Only my grip on the post at my back kept me upright. What the hell had that been? Some kind of attack? Or just my tiredness getting the better of me, too much energy drained out of me at the end of a long day?